Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960

Mass Mobilization in the Democr atic

Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960

Mass Mobilization

in the Democratic Republic

of Vietnam, 1945–1960

•

Alec Holcombe

University of Hawai‘i Pr ess

Honolulu

© 2020 University of Hawai‘i Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

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25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover photo: Peasants thresh rice at the An …ắng Collective Farm (An Lão District,

Haiphong, 1960). Courtesy of Vietnam News Agency (…ông tấn xã Việt Nam).

Dedicated to the Alta Bates Hospital NICU

•

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Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations, Common Terms, and Administrative Units xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1

The Vietnamese Revolution, August 1945 to March 1946 17

Chapter 2

Coexistence with the French, March to December 1946 38

Chapter 3

The Shi to the Countryside, 1947–1948 59

Chapter 4

The Turning Point, 1949–1950 79

Chapter 5

Military Stalemate and Rice-Field Decline, 1951–1952 98

Chapter 6

The Move to Land Reform, 1952–1953 119

Chapter 7

The Basic Structure of the Mass Mobilization 139

Chapter 8

Propagandizing the Land Reform 159

Chapter 9

Hunger, 1953 179

Chapter 10

Điện Biên Phủ and Geneva, 1954 200

Chapter 11

The Period of the 300 Days, 1954–1955 219

Chapter 12

Reinvigorating the Land Reform, 1955–1956 239

Chapter 13

Fallout, 1956 259

Chapter 14

Re-Stalinization and Collectivization, 1957–1960 281

Conclusion 298

Notes 309

Bibliography 343

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the support, in dišerent forms, provided by Peter Zinoman

and Nguyễn Nguyệt Cầm at the University of California, Berkeley. Thanks go

as well to Virginia Shih, the university’s indefatigable Southeast Asia librarian,

and to a stimulating cohort of Vietnam-focused graduate students whose paths

crossed with mine. They include Jason Morris, Martina Nguyen, Jason Picard,

Gerard Sasges, and Nu Anh Tran.

In Vietnam, countless regular people gave me patience, warmth, and encour￾agement as I learned to speak their language. I am also grateful to the many in￾tellectuals, archival staš members, and librarians in Vietnam who supported my

research in various ways. Over the past decade, Đỗ Kiên has been an invaluable

liaison with the Vietnam Studies Institute, my sponsoring institution and an

a¡liate of the Vietnam National University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

For their insights, advice, and friendship, the literary scholars Lại Nguyên Ân,

Phạm Xuân Nguyên, and Phạm Toàn have my warmest thanks. In Hanoi, two

Western friends and dedicated Vietnamese language learners—Shay MacKen￾zie and Thadeus Hostetler—have long been sources of inspiration, knowledge,

and humor.

Across the ‰eld of Vietnam studies more broadly, Christopher Goscha, Tuong

Vu, Keith Taylor, Shawn McHale, Charles Keith, Haydon Cherry, Liam Kelley,

and Michael Montasano have provided feedback on various writings and ideas

of mine over the years. I thank them for their time and insights. Thanks also go

to the scholar Alex Thai Vo who, to my good fortune, overlapped with me for

several fruitful months in Vietnam’s National Archives III. At the University

of Hawai‘i Press, Masako Ikeda has my warmest gratitude for her help in the

publication process.

I conducted much of the work for this book as part of Ohio University’s his￾tory department, whose members I thank for their support and friendship. I

am especially grateful to Ingo Trauschweizer, Robert Ingram, Josh Hill, Ziad

Abu-Rish, and Katherine Jellison for their guidance and support. In the wider

Ohio University community, Ješrey Shane, Pittaya Paladroi, Ješ Ferrier, Taka

Suzuki, and William Frederick have helped me in dišerent ways.

xi

xii acknowledgments

Extending farther back in time, I am grateful for the support that I have re￾ceived from the Gowan family over the course of my life. During elementary

and secondary school, I was blessed to have many outstanding teachers, includ￾ing Rachel D’Ambrosio, Leonard Gulotta, Bruce Adams, the late Robert Pratt,

Edward Dunn, and the late O.B. Davis. Since my undergraduate years, my life

has been enriched by the ideas and experiences of seven university friends: Brian

Dickinson, Albert Hanser, Benjamin Holbrook, Ludovic Hood, Trevor Patzer,

Scott Roop, and Professor David Josephson. In various indirect ways, they are

a part of this book. So too are my fellow teachers at the Timbertop School in

Australia, especially Barnaby Buntine, Rachel Dobson, Roger Herbert, David

Hobbs, Sam Ridley, Charlie Scudamore, Russell Shem, and Sophie Stuart.

Most of all, I thank my family. Melissa and Wendy, my two older sisters, were

a positive in¥uence during my younger years and remain so for my family and

me today. My brother-in-law, Carl Kawaja, with the exception of times playing

tennis or ping-pong, has been a tremendous source of support and inspiration.

As for my mother and father, Marty and Tom Holcombe, I thank them for the

many hours spent reading dras of my work and, of course, for the years of love

and support. To my daughter, Asa, and to my son, Thomas, in the words of the

late Joseph Levenson, “You added years to the writing, but joy to the years.” And

‰nally, to my beloved Dieu—I am proud to be your husband and friend.

Abbreviations, Common Ter ms,

and Administrative Units

xiii

CCP Chinese Communist Party

DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa)

GF General File: Democratic Republic of Vietnam documents from

1945 and 1946 captured by French and held in Archives national

d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Province.

HCMTT Hồ Chí Minh toàn tập (The Complete Collection of Hồ Chí

Minh’s Writings)

ICP Indochinese Communist Party (Đảng Cộng sản Đông Dương):

The name for Vietnam’s Communist Party from 1930 until 1945.

PRC People’s Republic of China

TTLT3 Trung Tâm lưu trữ quốc gia số 3 (Nationial Archive Center

no. 3, Hanoi)

VWP Vietnamese Workers’ Party (Đảng lao động Việt Nam): The name

for Vietnam’s Communist Party from 1951 to 1976.

VKDTT Văn kiện Đảng toàn tập (The Complete Collection of Party

Documents)

Village Làng or thôn

Subdistrict Xã (a collection of roughly four to eight villages). I follow Benedict

Kerkvliet’s avoidance of the more common translation, “commune,”

which could be confused with a collective farm.

District Huyện: a group of several subdistricts.

Province Tỉnh

Party Congress Đại hội Đảng: Usually occurring once every ‰ve to eight years, it

is the Communist Party’s most important event. Party congresses

involve the election of new Central Committee members, retire￾ments of current members, various changes in the administrative

assignments, and the establishment of a new party agenda.

Party Plenum Hội nghị Ban chấp hành trung ương Đảng: A meeting of the party’s

Central Executive Committee that usually occurs twice a year. The

plenums are numbered in sequence following the most recent Party

Congress. For example, the 3rd Party Plenum means the third meeting

of the Central Executive Committee since the last Party Congress.

Politburo Bộ Chính trị: The party’s highest o¡ce, usually containing from

ten to twenty members.